We Have Come to Terms
by Meridian1
Summary: I'm glad you didn't do it." They may disagree, but Ana and Michael can and do learn to understand each other and more besides.


**Title:** We Have Come to Terms  
**Author:** Meridian  
**Rating:** PG  
**Summary:** "I'm glad you didn't do it." They may disagree, but Ana and Michael can and do learn to understand each other and more besides.  
**Spoilers:** Spoils about half of the movie, so, if you haven't seen _Dawn of the Dead_, I recommend you don't read this. However, references to events at the beginning of the film are _mostly _(please note: that's _mostly_, not _entirely_) nonspecific, and it does not spoil the end (though I am sure it works better if you've seen it).****  
**Author's Notes:** On a another story, a reviewer commented they wanted to know more about how Ana and Michael relate to each other. Though I do believe there is a significant romantic interest on both their parts, I see it more as a meeting of minds and personalities than of libidos. Given that the two don't always see eye to eye at first and yet become closer later on, I decided to imagine what it would take to cement their friendship in this fanfic. So, this is not a romance, but it is romantic, or so I flatter myself. Constructive criticism is more than welcome, it is encouraged. Basically, don't take my word for it. 

******

The gunshot and her heartbeat reverberated in her ears. It was satisfying and somewhat reassuring to catch, from the corner of her eye, Michael starting, just as surprised as she. Why he should be, why she should, faced with the cold hard facts, was beyond either of them. She had _known_ Frank would die...and come back. Her belief had determined Michael's assessment and the group's decision. Still, neither of them was ready to accept the consequences of this new truth, not with Frank so recently alive, not while Nicole was still crying over at Sanity.

Michael walked around the love seat where she sat and collapsed bodily into the matching leather chair. His head fell back, his eyes were closed, tight, pained. Ana held onto her anger, still present from earlier. Why did she have to be right? Why did Michael presume he got to pick and choose when people died? Looking at him, she couldn't muster indignation. He hadn't done it, not him personally, and she was glad, relieved. Shooting those things outside was one matter, one of survival. Shooting a living person who knew what was coming, who would cease to exist because of it, well, that was another.

"What does it look like?" Michael asked, sounding defeated. She blinked at him, unable to fathom what he meant. He raised his head, opened his eyes, looking at her with his direct, honest gaze. "What does it look like when someone becomes one of them?"

"I..." She prepared a denial and swallowed it as she watched his eyebrows narrow. He wasn't about to accept a nothing answer, but no way she wanted to talk about it. What did it look like? It looked like Luis, standing up with his back to her. Like him rounding on her because she had a pulse. Like violence. Like _hunger_. He wanted to know what it _looked like_! Over her dead body. Over Luis'. "It's not pretty," she said, curtly, secretly hoping that closed the subject.

"Who?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I noticed," Michael leaned forward, pinching the bridge of his nose. Lips drawn and thin, she stared out at nothing in front of her. Until she heard Michael take a quick breath; her eyes snapped to his face. He was focusing on her ring. Blood-smeared despite her best efforts to wash up. There hadn't been time to scrub off Luis' blood or that woman's, the one she had put down with a fire poker in Metropolis. Their eyes met for a moment, hers searching, his full of dawning comprehension.

_God, don't let him speak, don't let him say he's sorry._ He reached for her hand, turning it over to look at the gold band with its flecks of dried maroon. Ana held her breath, possibly to stem tears. He wasn't letting go, not of the subject, not of her hand, and, oh, how she wanted him to just stop. If he stopped, she could go on pretending this was a dream, or that her life before was the dream and that it hurt no more than waking to have lost a best friend and husband in one blow.

"I used to do deliveries to jewelers." A genuine giggle escaped her lips before she covered them with a hand, her eyebrows jumping as he nodded. Yes, it was true. He continued, "It's how I was even able to afford a ring for my first wife." No ring on his hands now, she noted, nodding for him to continue. "I made friends with a lot of the store owners. They didn't trust me at first because I was new. New guys in that line of work are pretty suspicious."

"Why?"

"Because a lot of them think it's an opportunity for expensive five-finger discounts," he said, shrugging, as though being suspected of thievery were a common occurrence for him. "The guy I trained with got busted trying to lift a diamond ring for his girlfriend. He was new to the business, too."

"And they trusted you after that?"

Michael smiled. "I was the one who turned him in."

"Hmm." She bit her lower lip, grinning, pretending not to believe him. _I'll just bet you did_. It seemed like something he would do. "I bet it didn't make you too popular with the guys."

"No, it didn't."

"But you did it anyway," she said, sobering, her words circling too close to their current situation for laughter and gaiety.

"It was the right thing to do." Michael reclined again, slouching and resting his head on the chair back, lapsing back into weary, satisfied silence. She tried to gauge if it he'd been trying to import some lesson with his story, whether he related the story as a parable, or whether he actually meant it. The cynic refused to believe it wasn't some subtle nudging, a muted 'I-told-you-I-was-right.' Michael was manipulatively intelligent at times; nonetheless, the most infuriating part of his genius was his sincerity. _It was the right thing to do_. Many people might say it, claim to live by it, but she was sitting with someone who actually believed it. 

"Why didn't you ask me before?" She whispered, surprised to find she'd said it aloud at all.

Michael closed his eyes. "I didn't want to pry."

"We should probably talk about these things." She wanted to groan; hadn't she just willed him not to bring it up?

"Yeah, we should. All of us. But we don't. We can't."

"Why, do you think?"

He sighed, heavily. "Are you going to ask Kenneth about his brother?" Ana bit her lip harder. Kenneth had wanted to leave, Michael had told her, had been willing to take the risk of driving out in Norma's rig, to find his brother at what was left of Fort Pastor. She swallowed, blinking. Michael turned his head towards her, gazing at her steadily. "What about the guy with the foot? Going to ask how he hurt it? What about me, Ana? Are you going to ask?"

"Would you tell me?"

To his credit, he answered right away. "Probably not yet."

"We have to, though, don't we?"

"Yeah."

They lapsed into silence for a long minute. Ana fiddled with her ring, twisting it between thumb and middle finger until it started to loosen, sending flakes of dried blood fluttering into her lap. It felt good to rub it against the sensitive skin of her fingertips, like it was more real that way.

"Luis."

"What?"

"My husband. Luis. It was him." Michael nodded, silent, indicating she could continue if she chose. If not, that was okay, too. "Our neighbor attacked him." Her hand drifted to her throat unconsciously; she attempted to pass off the gesture as kneading a kink in her neck.

"You didn't know what had happened."

"Mm," she murmured, visibly sizing him up in order to reconcile Michael's nonchalant attitude with his sharp intuition. Couldn't get anything past him. "We went to bed early. There were some radio broadcasts, but," she paused, smiling without humor, "I switched the station." If she hadn't been tired from a twelve-hour shift, hadn't been aching to get home and fall into bed with Luis, tell him the good news about the end of the month...

"I tried to go to work."

"Huh?" She shook her head to lose the pointless 'what ifs?' and regret. Michael had recognized what she'd done; she had shared with him despite a desperate desire to deny it all, and he was reciprocating. Suddenly, she was greedy for information about him, about what brought him into her life. Not all of it was curiosity; after tearing out her heart and offering her story, she was possessed of a vindictive desire to hear that he had suffered, too. It wasn't pretty or deserved, and she tried to quash it. "Where did you work?"

"I'm a manager at an electronics store. It was inventory day-store had to be open start of business hours, so we were doing a super-early morning instead of a late-nighter."

"Inventory?" She hoped she managed to convey the ignorance of a person who, by some kind twist of fate, had never worked in retail. "Where you see what's in the store?"

"And make sure it matches against a list of what's been delivered, sold, transferred to other stores, or returned," he agreed. "I got up at four-thirty to shower. No water pressure in the building. So, I decided, what hell, fuck it, I could get one when I got home. I made coffee and headed out."

She knew what was coming. "How far did you get?"

"End of the hall."

"Jesus."

"I lived on the first floor. Otherwise, I'd be dead. Or worse." He didn't need to expand on that. "Grabbed some tools, used the fire escape to get down to the street. Ran like crazy." Michael didn't appear crazed. His tone was blandly bored, as though recounting any old day in his routine: got up, went to work, bought lunch and coffee, came home, and how was your day dear? Only instead the pattern had turned into the average commute in Hell: get up early with no shower, walk outside to find neighbors cannibalizing each other, arm yourself, and get the hell out of Dodge.

"How'd you meet Andre and Luda?"

"They were holed up in a 7-11 with about," he frowned-not being able to remember obviously bothered him-"I'd say there were about fifteen people behind the bulletproof glass where the check-out guys worked. One of them was bleeding pretty bad." Michael shuddered without noticing. "We left him behind when we ran. Lost about three more getting to the back door." He stopped, shrugging and shaking his head at her disapproving grimace. "No one knew anything beyond basic first aid. People who were hurt got left."

"I understand," she leaned forward, reaching out to place a hand on his knee. She _did_ understand. "I got in my car. Luis nearly broke through the windshield." Michael raised and eyebrow. "I had to swerve to avoid all these wrecks. People kept knocking on my windows asking for help. I didn't stop for them." 

"There were a lot of wrecks on the highway," Michael offered, his eyes darkening. "A few of those things were trapped in seatbelts inside the cars. I can't believe I didn't think about _why_ that was." Ana squeezed his knee, a gesture of sympathy and support. _They had been people once, trying to escape, who didn't make it_.

"I had a patient that morning who came in with bites he got in a bar brawl. He was comatose by the time I left. There were incoming, too. I missed all of that." She shivered. "Last time I saw Pete," she saw his look of confusion, explained, "a paramedic friend of mine, he was heading out in an ambulance to pick up more. He looked exhausted, too. They're not usually so busy before the night shift." What had she heard Pete say? That it was 'starting early'?

"You're lucky, you know. You got out. Andre said the hospitals and police stations were the first shelters to be compromised. He tried to take Luda to the emergency room just in case." As Luda was close to term, that made sense.

"Of course," Ana said, knowledgeably, "they'd be ground zero for an outbreak. The injured would go to the hospitals."

"Everyone else went to the police. And some of them _had_ to be infected."

"We're lucky, huh?" She closed her eyes against her memories of the past few days, the sights and sounds of terror made real. Michael put a hand over hers, and it was hard to ignore how comforting it felt there. "It's dumb luck."

"Naturally. I'm here." Michael donned a slightly lopsided grin. "Voted most likely not to survive a crisis of biblical proportions."

"Don't say that," Ana scolded, laughing yet serious. "I'm glad you're here." As discreetly as she could, she extracted her hand from his, uncomfortable with this uncanny comfort he engendered. It was too soon to be enjoying strange company this much, in _that_ way. Her heart still ached for Luis, even as her brain replayed, in an endless loop, images of the crazed, blood-thirsty creature he had become. Michael, if he sensed her confusion or hesitation, did not comment on it. Not directly.

"So, what now?"

"We should keep ourselves busy."

"Lots to do," Michael agreed. "We should double-check the barricades, entrances and such. I'm going to have to talk to C.J. about that again." He didn't relish that task, she saw, though he did not pass it off. Terry could help out-the kid knew enough, certainly knew C.J. well enough. "I want to be sure I haven't missed anything."

"You're pretty thorough," she commented, only realizing the truth of it as the words left her lips. He _was_. The man with the plan. Andre deferred to him, Kenneth, ultimately, did, too. There was no telling how the new group would take to his self-effacing self-assurance, but she doubted there would be any power struggles. Whether he'd intended it or not, through demonstrably good judgment of both situation and character, Michael had nominated himself leader, and they had thrown in behind him. "You've got a knack for getting things done. Organizing," she trailed off, sweeping one hand about to indicate she meant he was responsible for this, for keeping this safety, this haven, _intact_.

"Mind's still set on inventory-mode, I guess," Michael waved off the compliment. He stood then, giving her a wary once-over. "We okay, Ana?" _Are you mad at me,_ is what he meant. Did he really still think she could be?

She rose, extending a hand and a smirk. "We're okay, Michael."

The corners of his mouth eased into a relieved smile. "Good," he breathed out and shook her hand. Just as she prepared to let go, he drew her into a hug. Momentarily stunned, she froze, stiff as he wrapped her in a brotherly, unassuming embrace, arms going around her waist and staying well away from off-bounds areas.

_He's telling you that he's 'safe,' girl_. Ana relaxed into his arms, reaching to loop hers around his neck, going up on tip-toe. This was about comfort. He wanted them to be okay on all fronts. He _had_ deduced the reason for her reserve. Of course, he had. She couldn't afford to underestimate his vast intelligence-he was straight with her, but he was unimaginably savvy. _I'm safe_, he was telling her,squeezing her hard once and stepping back to look her in the eye,_ but that might change_. She sunk back into the couch's deep cushions as he retreated towards the elevators, probably en route to the guard room. __

_ That might change_. It might, if her traitorous inklings were any indication. And maybe that change wasn't a bad thing. She toyed with her ring, absently rotating the gold around her finger. Change, of late, had been a _very_ bad thing. It would be nice if that weren't the case _all_ the time.


End file.
